Tuesday, 8 April 2014

where there's music and there's people who are young and alive....

A whole lot of shit is going to be written about the life and death of Peaches Geldof over the next few days and her face is going to be used to sell even more papers than it did during her tragically short lifetime.... let's hope that, amidst the feeding frenzy and rubber-necking, we don't forget the basic human tragedy of a 25 year old woman dying and leaving behind a husband, two young sons and a grieving family.

My boss came into work on Monday morning and was glassy-eyed, tearful and overcome with grief. It turned out that she had just found out that a good friend of hers had been found dead on Sunday at the bottom of a flight of stairs in her home. She wasn't yet thirty years old. It seems such a tragically banal way to die; something that could happen to any one of us any day. What can you say? What platitudes are going to bring back someone so irretrievably gone?

We tried to send my boss home, but she didn't want to be alone and, to steal the phrase from The Smiths, she wanted to see people and she wanted to see life.

Life is precious and fragile and so easily snuffed out. Now is not the time for tired, cynical quips.

“There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.”